Tag Archives: Trendmasters

#1355: Captain Keith

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

CAPTAIN KEITH – STEALTH VOLTRON FORCE

VOLTRON: THE THIRD DIMENSION (TRENDMASTERS)

“Strength, lion-like reflexes, the cool confidence of a leader.  These are the qualities that propelled Keith to the helm of the Voltron Force – the most ferocious fighting force in the universe.  Sitting within the head of Voltron, Keith boldly dispatches commands to his team – commands that shred Robeasts, blast space pirates, and light up the universe with firepower!”

Today, I’m reviewing this here Voltron figure.  This here Voltron figure was very hard to prove the existence of, by the way.  Apparently, I’m the only person on the planet who owns this figure.  Or, at the very least one of the only two people who have both this figure *and* an internet connection.  Maybe we were all supposed to chose one or the other and I just showed up late that day?  I don’t know.  Anyway, without further ado, here’s Captain Keith!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Captain Keith was released as part of Trendmasters’ tie-in line for Voltron: The Third Dimension, the CGI relaunch of Voltron from the ’90s.  This particular figure was part of the “Stealth Voltron Force” sub-set of the line, from around 1999 or so.  The figure was available both with the Black Stealth Cycle and on his own.  Going by what I’ve seen on line, the single release is a lot rarer, but that’s the one I have.  So there.  The figure stands about 4 1/4 inches tall and he has 6 points of articulation.  His sculpt was largely unique to him, though he shares his head with the regular Keith, which is fair enough.  The sculpt doesn’t really look much like the character from the show, but that’s okay.  The show designs were…less than stellar.  Not that this figure’s anything amazing himself.  This guy’s sculpt feels rather on the clunky side for something of this vintage.  The proportions are really odd: he’s, like, 93% legs, his head’s super small, and his hands are only vaguely hand-like.  He’s also rather on the stiff side in terms of stance, but also has this weird, partial squat thing going on.  And, to top it off, most of the articulation isn’t worked into the sculpt at all, which definitely looks wonky.  On the plus side, there’s some nice work on the head, especially on the face, which looks nice and determined.  One of the cooler things about this particular set of figures was the paint; the armored sections are all vac-metallized.  Why the “stealth” variants were made extra shiny is beyond me, but the end result certainly looks cool.  The only downside is that the process makes his paint more prone to chipping, but it’s far from the worst case of this I’ve run into.  Keith is packed with a giant missile-launching cannon and a removable helmet, which are both pretty fun extras.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I’ve never seen an actual episode of Voltron: The Third Dimension, but I did catch the original show while it was still in syndication, which meant I was very much familiar with the characters.  Of course, the only toys around were these ones from Third Dimension, so this was the best I was gonna do.  I’m not 100% why I got Keith (since I never got any of the others), but I recall really wanting him and being very excited when I finally got him.  He’s not the greatest figure out there, and is in fact quite deeply flawed, but he’s entertaining enough, I suppose.

#0677: Battle Ravaged Robot

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

BATTLE-RAVAGED ROBOT

LOST IN SPACE

RobotBR1

You know when you hear about a bad movie, for like a long time, and it just builds up this reputation of being so bad, and you think to yourself “it can’t really be that bad”? And then you watch it and it is indeed that bad? Yeah, that’s the Lost In Space movie from the 90s. To be fair, the movie isn’t completely without its merits. Among the positives are the end credits (and no, I’m not just saying that because they meant the movie was over. I actually like the end credits. They soothe me.) and the film’s take on the distinctive Lost In Space Robot. There were also some toys, which always excites me. Most of them were garbage, but some of the Robot toys didn’t suck. Let’s look at one of those!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

RobotBR2So, this is the Battle Ravaged Robot, from Trendmaster’s movie-based Lost In Space line. He was one of the two versions of the Robot released to go with the 5-inch scale human figures. The Robot is based on two separate looks from the film, all rolled up into one figure. As the name notes, he represents the Robot after he’s damaged while fighting the spider-things on the derelict ship, but that’s actually more of an alt look for the more show-inspired, second half of the movie look that is the figure’s default form. In his default set-up, the figure is about 4 inches tall and has 7 points of articulation. He also had wheels on the underside of his base, allowing him to roll, as well as legs that have weird spring-loaded feature to them. Also, the pincers on the larger arm are supposed to move via the very obvious lever on the side, but they really don’t. The main base of the figure, the legs, and the lower arms were all shared between this figure and the other Robot in the series, which seems sensible enough. They’re actually pretty well sculpted parts for the time. They have plenty of detailing, and they match up pretty well with the designs from the film. The figure also gets a unique “torso” piece, which features the joint for his more classically show-inspired head, as well as a socket to plug in his larger third arm. The head and arm are both just as nicely sculpted as the re-used parts and match up pretty well, so that’s good. Paint-wise, the figure is a little on the simple side, at least for the source material, but he’s not terribly handled. There’s a nice mix of greys and browns, with the occasional blue cropping up as well. The paint works reasonably well for the second iteration of the Robot. The figure is packed with a two-piece shell, allowing him to be “transformed” into the Battle Ravaged version of the Robot’s first iteration. This is a cool idea, but the execution ends up being a little off, mostly due to the color schemes of the two designs being different. It doesn’t look terrible, and, to their credit, they’ve added some brown damaged parts to the torso shell, so as to make it look like the brown-colored parts of the second Robot are just additional damage, but it doesn’t quite work. The figure also had a sound feature, but the batteries are long dead on mine, so I have no idea what sounds it would have made.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I actually went and saw Lost In Space opening day. My dad and uncle had been big fans of the show growing up, so they took me and my cousin to see it. Truth be told, as a 6 year old, I didn’t mind the movie all that much. I really liked the Robot, so I ended up having a few of the toys of him, this one included. However, my original Battle Ravage Robot went missing, so I ended up getting this replacement from Yesterday’s Fun. He was the only LIS figure they had and I felt sort of bad for him. This figure definitely has some issues, and he comes from a pretty bad line, but he himself is actually a lot of fun. I’ve owned far worse.

RobotBR3